Nonfiction / History / Native American Culture / Pioneer Missionaries
Viking
April 27, 2021
ASIN : B08FH9GJWK
39027 KB
ISBN-10 : 0525561668
ISBN-13 : 978-0525561668
463 pages
3 Stars
Being a History Buff, not an Historian, I’ve been fascinated by the Whitman/Spalding story since fourth or fifth grade. I love the history of the Oregon Territory, the mountain men, and Native Americans. When I heard about this book, I was at my favorite bookseller immediately if not sooner.
Murder at the Mission was my book group read, which I suggested. I no longer have all the research material I collected when I wrote Blood on the Ground, which described the same happenings. However, if my memory serves me correctly, there are some departures and omissions in Harden’s telling of the tale, as well as new information.
For some reason, I wasn’t totally shocked at Spalding’s Big Lie about Marcus and his trip “to save Oregon” but I was surprised at some of the facts Mr. Harden quoted (Joe Meek finding his daughter’s bones—how did he recognize them?) As I recall, his daughter and the youngest Sager girl died a few days later and were buried by Joe Stanfield in the old cemetery (the Rangers tell me they know where). I had hoped Mr. Harden had found more information about the prime agitators, Joe Stanfield, Nicholas Finlay, and Joe Lewis and how their heated and repeated lies added to the Cayuse belief that Dr. Whitman was actively killing them or passively allowing sick Cayuse to die. I would have liked to learn more about Marcus’ proposal he was to have made later that afternoon (the killings were in the morning) to the Chiefs that he and Narcissa were willing to sell the Mission to the Catholics and move as soon as the sick children were well enough to travel. (Timing, they say, is everything.)
The trial of the five Cayuse is a fascinating read. And the execution was to have been made after the new Governor took office in 30 days, if at all. The hanging was, in truth, a lynching, because there was fear the incoming Governor would commute the sentence. The knot of one wasn’t properly tied, and Meek stomped on the head and neck until he (Cayuse) died. Revenge for Helen Mar. And, of course, my burning question I’ve never seen answered: How did Protestants react to the discovery that Fr. Brouillet baptized each of the dead he helped bury as Catholics once in the grave before burial? (Perhaps it’s in the book, and I missed it.)
My Errata Sheet for Murder at the Mission by Blaine Harden
Note, I may be suffering from confirmation bias, and I have none of my reference books, so these must all be taken as opinion, not fact.
1. In all of my 79 years, I have never heard any Tribe referred to with an ‘es’ at the end for the plural. That’s like having a herd of sheepes, or a flock of geeses. I did check out the dictionary and the plural of Cayuse is 1) Cayuse, 2) Cayuses. I think it’s one more way the white eyes are knifing the Natives, telling them they don’t know their own name. /meow/
2. Page xxvi, Introduction: “…which tried to turn them (the kidnapped children) into little white boys and girls,” Everything I’ve read about that, every Indian I’ve talked to about that belies this statement. They were taken to turn them into good little Indians, who spoke only the language, worshipped only the god, followed only the culture of the dominant caste and they would become good maids/laborers for that dominant culture.
3. page 80, toward bottom:” In the late summer of 1847, more than a thousand wagons rolled past the Whitman mission…” I believe the route had changed by then and they went through Pendleton and on the south shore of the Columbia. Part of the reason was Whitman charged them for supplies, and although he wasn’t getting rich, they thought his prices were outrageous, not thinking of the transportation costs.
4. Page 86, about 1/3 of the way down. “Narcissa was standing near a shattered window…a bullet struck in in the right shoulder.” The accounts I read had the bullet going into her right breast. Either way, it proved fatal. At any rate, what other books have said is that she was still alive the next day, when the Cayuse convinced her to come outside. She lay on a chaise, and they carried her out, then dumped her on the cold ground where she died.
5. Personal comment not noted by Harden: Joe Stanfield dug a long grave about 3’ deep for the 13 bodies. He and Fr. Brouillet lowered the 13 in and then Fr. Brouillet sprinkled Holy Water on each of them and baptized them Roman Catholic before tossing a bit of the dirt on each. Stanfield washed the bodies; the hostage women sewed the shrouds.
6. Page 98, about halfway down. “…On his way east to alert President Polk…Meek visited the mission, where he identified and reburied his daughter’s remains.” I have real heartburn with this. The remains of the victims were all skeletonized. They recognized Marcus’ skull by his gold tooth, and Narcissa’s by a bit of hair and scalp still stuck to it. His daughter died a few days later due to neglect. She was over the measles and still weak. The Indians would not allow anyone to go upstairs to care for the two girls, Helen Mar Meek and the youngest Sager girl. Also, Joe Stanfield continued to do his penance, and buried the girls in the old cemetery. Because they were small, he could dig the hole/s deep enough the wolves and others wouldn’t smell them and dig them up. I’ve talked to a couple of rangers, and they know where the girls are buried, but aren’t sharing that information because they don’t want people digging them up.
7. Page 101, toward bottom. “The Cayuses soon brought all their hostages, including Spalding’s now emaciated daughter Eliza, to Fort Walla Walla” (not the current Fort, but down where the Walla Walla River meets the Columbia, the fort was on the mudflats of the Columbia) On January 2, 1848, all of the hostages and eleven other anxious whites at the fort left by boat for Fort Vancouver…” All of the hostages were not taken. They refused to take David Malin Cortez, an 8-year-old that the Whitman’s adopted. His father was a Spanish fur trader, his mother a Walla Walla. The rescuers refused to take him because he was too dark, and no one would accept him. No one knows what happened to him. He disappeared from all records.
8. Page 132, last sentence above indent. “Perkins insisted in his letter that if Marcus Whitman had been more of a loving missionary…the Cayuses would not have killed him.” This is probably true. They adored little Clarissa when she was born, and called her, if I’m remember correctly, “Little Cayuse Girl.” The Whitman’s demanded the Cayuse learn English to properly hear the word of God. The Whitman’s, especially Narcissa, were used to privacy. They Indians weren’t. How do you knock on a skin door, or even a wikiup? There is a lot to be said about her feelings toward the Indians, but the Sager girls, in their recounting, belie much of it. Narcissa never let anyone speak badly about the Natives. The Natives had very little in the way of private ownership. It was all for one and one for all.
9. Page 136, last ‘graph top section. Meek assisted in speeding the death of the last Cayuse.” Indeed, he did. He kept stomping on his head and neck. He didn’t know which Indian killed Helen Mar, and he didn’t care. The hanging was illegal, but it would be done. I don’t think any of the five had anything to do with the killing of Helen or the Sager child. It was the hot-headed young men who guarded the hostages and refused to let anyone out to care for the two children.
10. Page 127, halfway down, “Mass public hangings…and celebrating white Christian dominance over savagery.” O! The irony! The irony!
11. Pa 139, 2d ‘graph. “The federal government…the Dakota Indians (also called the Eastern Sioux.” Actually, the Eastern Sioux are known as the Catawba and lived in the Piedmont of Virginia and the Carolinas.
12. Page 179 when Joseph is captured. I believe at least one of his children and several of his people made it into Canada. One daughter and others eventually returned.
13. Page 328, 2d ‘graph. He talks about the dams being built. When I first moved to the Tries, I caught a half hour ‘special’ on the tube by some Yakama station. The reporter got some very interesting information using FOIA. The Dalles Dam, Twin Falls Dam, and others were deliberately built where they were for the express purpose to drown the falls, eradicate the fishing, and force the Indians go move someplace else.
The Catholics had been with the Natives for a couple hundred years, having come with the Trappers. When Five Crows chose Lorinda Bewley (?) for a wife, she cried and was not a happy camper. Five Crows let her spend her days with the Priests, but they put her out at night when Five Crows came to get her. There was no love lost between the Catholics and the Protestants, and yes Fr. Brouillet helped Spalding, probably saved his life. He also helped bury the dead.
Joe Lewis, African and Eastern Canada Native, Nicholas Finlay, and Joe Stanfield agitated the Cayuse telling them the whites were coming to poison the men, steal the women and horses and land. The morning of the killing Finlay took David Malin, and two or three other Metis children to Ft. Walla Walla where the priests who were there returned them to their Indian mothers. Except David. They threatened to give him back to his mother (who burned him, threw him in the trash pit, and tried to sell him to Narcissa) or sell him to the Cayuse as a slave. Either was a death sentence. When the hostages came to the fort, he had a couple days and nights with his “sisters” the Sager girls and Mary Jane Bridger before the whites were taken downriver.
He did not discuss the lie the Cayuse told, about how Narcissa Whitman was mean to them. That lie was brought to light by the Sager young women and their writing.
Someplace I read that when Meek & Co. (not the Governor) met the Cayuse and returned to Oregon City with the five, Meek is alleged to have asked Tomahas why he surrendered. Tomahas allegedly replied, “Does a Savior rescue his people out of respect—or out of love?”
“Save our Salmon—Can Judge Bolt!”
from an old bumper sticker
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